setting the right examples for the sustenance of the society. Their
personalities were different, but not their value systems and, least of all,
their understanding of dharma.
I started my previous book, Mahābhārata Unravelled: Lesser-Known
Facets of a Well-Known History, with the chapter ‘What Is Dharma?’
Hence, I will refrain from repeating it here. But in short, dharma refers to
the overarching principle that leads to the sustainability of society. In
practice, it is a broad term that could mean duty, responsibility, virtue,
righteousness, probity and/or religion, as per the context. Adharma is the
exact opposite—that which leads to unsustainability and destruction.
I must confess I too was culpable and carried such inferences before I
decided to read the itihāsa for myself, inspired by the lectures of Professor
B. Mahadevan of the Indian Institute of Management, Bengaluru. I realised
that just like the Mahābhārata, a lot of what we think we know about the
Rāmāyana is based on writings/interpretations/retellings rather than what
Rishi Vālmiki, a contemporary of Shri Rāma, has narrated to us.
Moreover, many contemporary writings on the Rāmāyana have not been
written to understand the itihāsa and learn from it. Rather, these works seem
inclined to impose their own narratives on society, making it all about class,
gender and race conflicts. According to these stories, Rāma killed Rāvana
not because of the latter’s terrible deeds but because of the differences in
their races. Shurpanakhā was punished by Lakshmana not because she tried
to harm Seetā, but because of Lakshmana’s misogynist tendencies.
While anyone is free to take creative liberties in writing fiction (and may
that genre grow), it becomes important to remind ourselves of what the
actual itihāsa is, time and again, especially when fiction starts setting the
tone of the social narrative for a civilisation as ancient as ours.
There are also other retellings seeped in the Bhakti rasa. Here, Rāma is
the ishta, the beloved lord of the poet. Every word that the poet writes is so
full of bhāva and shraddhā that it enraptures the readers and listeners,
drawing them into a sea of emotions of love and longing, becoming sad in
Rāma’s sorrow, happy in his joy. In such retellings, Rāma is an epitome of
stoicism, love, empathy and magnanimity, unmoved and unaffected even by
the most challenging of situations. Goswāmi Tulsidās’s Rāmacharitmānas is
one such beautiful rendering. No wonder it continues to be one of the most
popular renditions of the Rāmāyana in Hindu households.